Friday, May 30Iron Mike can't even spawn disgust well any moreBy Ray RattoSpecial to ESPN.com

Mike Tyson used to be much better at making us ashamed for our interest
in him.

Mike Tyson's ability to inspire hatred is even in its declining stages.

Biting Evander Holyfield ... twice.

Biting Lennox Lewis ... in a news conference.

Offering to stomp the testicles of one interviewer's son,
and suggesting that another have sex with him in exchange for the interview.

Advocating child cannibalism.

Holding up his cuffed wrists as he is led to his arraignment on the rape charge he so cavalierly wants to reprise

Yeah, he could do it all, and occasionally knock people out, too. It
was quite a career.

But he has finally hit the Dennis Rodman Wall. He has nothing verbal
left to shock us with. He sought out the only outlet this side of "The
Food Network'' that doesn't do boxing to tell us that he didn't rape Desiree
Washington, that she was asking for it anyway, that other people do it all
the time and don't get in trouble, and if he had the chance, he'd like to
rape her, and her mother, too.

That's one denial, two indirect admissions, and a stated intention to
do it again with other members of her family. It's hard to see how much
harder he could have tried to make America stand up and notice him again.

But the reaction from the nation? Crickets. Chirping birds. Tumbleweeds
blowing down an empty street.

In other words, having lost his boxing career, he settled back into his
other pastime ... seeing America drop its collective jaw in outrage and
amazement. He even chose a most prodigious jaw in the news business, Fox
News Channel's Greta Van Susteren, to share his newly developed theories on
the benefits of retributional sexual assault.

And the sound from the nation? Peaceful slumber. A longneck being
opened in the back yard. The sound of one remote seeking out that Law &
Order: CI re-run.

So now what does our guy Mike do? He gives -- by any measure -- his most
comprehensively offensive interview ever, and now he's standing there
wondering why America looked for something more interesting to do.

He can't fight again, because that vein has been mined out. He can
fight both Klitschko brothers at the same time, with the winner getting
Tonya Harding, but the boxing world has moved on.

So what's he got left for our more sensitive sides? A tattoo of Osama
bin Laden across his latissimus dorsi? Converting to Satanism? Buying
Rodman's closet? Being legally adopted by Don King? Playing the accordion at
his next weigh-in?

Has he got anything at all?

We suspect not, and that's a sobering thought. For Tyson's considerable
array of psychological bubbles, the one he goes back to most often is
getting our attention by making us cover our eyes and ears.

And it's worked, time and time again, because whatever else we can
claim as a national personality, the one in which we like watching train
wrecks as they happen ranks either at or near the top.

But it didn't work this time, and the only three possibilities are
these:

Both the Stanley Cup Finals and Game Six of the Western Conference Final
were being played at the same time.

If he was serious, well, the legal system is eager and waiting to meet
his free time needs. If he was goofing in that playfully antisocial way of
his, well, been there, paid $49.95 for the pay-per-view, done that. And if
this is one of his many uncontrollable sociopathologies at work, well, once
you've tried to eat a fellow boxer, mere words won't get our attention any
more.

In other words, we've matured as a people. We watch people eat live
bats for money now.

This is the first time Tyson has been found guilty of felony boring,
which means that the two jobs he did best, fighting and making a fearsome
spectacle of himself, are now just things he used to do well.

And that leaves him with essentially nothing. His money is gone, and it
doesn't look like he will make enough fighting to get back to even. His
skills as a fighter are gone, or at least diminished to the point of
irrelevance.

And now, he can't even get us angry at him any more, and that says as
much about us as it does him.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com